What’s Up – Sun Facts
The Energy in Sunlight

Sunlight is electromagnetic energy. The energy acts as if it were in bundles of particles called photons. It travels in waves, and the distance between the crests of the waves is the wavelength.

Image of wavelengths. Top drawing shows a curved line with a short distance between crests that is defined as wavelength. Bottom curved line shows a longer distance between crests also defined as wavelength.

Each photon has an amount of energy that is inversely proportional to the wavelength of the light. In other words, long wavelength equals low energy, while short wavelength equals high energy.

In this picture, a photon with the top wavelength would have more energy than a photon with the bottom wavelength since the top wavelength is shorter than the bottom one.

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